"Without some independent mechanism to enforce honest behavior any market will become a criminal extortion enterprise."
Government is just a criminal extortion enterprise cloaked in a veil of legitimacy. Once you look past the bullshit, government operates on the basis of violence. All of their revenue is extorted based on the threat of violence and all their decrees are enforced at gunpoint. If you don't pay your taxes, government will steal your property and/or try to throw you in a cage. If you resist, they will resort to violence or even murder. The left wing fantasy is that big government would be good, if only the "right people" were in charge. A fantasy that is dispelled by all of the historical evidence. In the 20th century alone, governments have murdered tens of millions of people, typically their own citizens. That's not even considering war casualties.
It's only logical that food, fuel & water prices should go up when there's scarcity. High prices create the incentive for eliminating the scarcity. People who live in hurricane and tornado zones & don't have 2 weeks worth of food, fuel, water & medicine are idiots.
The ONLY reason pharmaceuticals in the USA are so ridiculously expensive is that your government makes it illegal to import or re-import any prescription drugs. Government agents guard the borders and make sure you don't come back from Europe or Canada with a suitcase full of cheap Epi-Pens. Get government out of the way and the free market will eliminate cross-border price discrepancies.
If regulatory capture is such a huge problem, then it's just more evidence that government is a fundamentally flawed institution. Yes, monopolies and special interests clearly use government power to control the economy. Big pharma using government to prevent competition is a perfect example. If that power can be so flagrantly abused, why should government possess that power in the first place? Take away the power and you remove the potential for abuse.
Fluoride has benefits for dental health, but mainly in surface application Sunscreen is useful to prevent sunburns, but it's not typically ingested. Even if fluoride isn't lethal in "small" quantities, that doesn't prove that it is harmless. Lead isn't lethal in small quantities, but its effect as a neurotoxin is well documented. Do a few searches on "fluoride" + "IQ". It's definitely a matter of dosage, but there's evidence that "high" doses can cause developmental defects in children.
Jeesh, I guess you take your global warming *cough* "climate change" pretty seriously don't you? WTF did I do to arouse your righteous indignation? I quoted three stories which gave vastly divergent estimates for sea level rise by 2050. The exhaustively used "climate change" talking points are: "The science is settled" & "95%(or whatever) of scientists agree...". I don't call estimates that are off by 2X, 3X or more than an order of magnitude "consensus". It just goes to show that the people making these predictions are not doing "science". They are taking scientific DATA, gathered over many decades, creating mathematical models and then trying to extrapolate into the future, based on a model of the past. That's not "science".
The linked article reads: "10 to 20 cm of sea-level rise expected no later than 2050."
Huh? I don't try to keep up with all of these doomsday predictions, but I thought it was supposed to be several feet and that huge tracts of land in coastal areas would be underwater by 2050? so I googled
sea level rise by 2050
The first result was a PBS story from 2012. This article quotes a report in the journal Environment Research Letters stating: "Sea levels could rise as much as 19 inches by 2050, according to what the report calls 'mid-range projections.' " Next result was an article from
The Guardian in 2015 which states "sea levels may still rise at least 6 meters (20 ft) above their current heights, radically reshaping the world's coastline". They also reference some pseudo-scientists in some scientific publication
I thought there was some "consensus" on this stuff? Have the "climate scientists" reached the consensus that sea levels will rise by anywhere from 10cm to 600cm by 2050, with 48cm being in the "mid range"?
Assad had been in power for well over a decade before the war started. His family was in power long before that. He did not need to manufacture an enemy to consolidate his power.
It made absolutely zero sense for Assad to use chemical weapons at that particular time. His forces were winning the war, so it's not as though this was some desperate, last-ditch effort to stave off imminent defeat. Furthermore, this supposed attack occurred shortly after U.S. Secretary of State Tillerson had publicly stated that Assad could be part of a post-war Syria. That was a departure from the long standing U.S. policy of regime change.
He's winning the war, the U.S. government said they won't call for his ouster in peace negotiations... and then he decides to generate international condemnation with an ineffectual chemical weapons attack? I don't believe the official Western narrative for one minute. I'm not saying Assad wouldn't use chemical weapons because he's a nice guy, but because it made no strategic sense for him to do so. Hoax, false flag or an air strike that hit chemical weapons stored in the area.
I don't think that's an accurate depiction. Banks were giving out mortgage loans with full knowledge that the borrowers would default on the loan. This was partly because they were bundling the mortgages into securities to be sold to other investors. They were able to collect their fees on the mortgage origination and then pass the risk off to someone else. It was also due to the false belief that property values would rise in perpetuity. Who cares about the poor schmuck taking out the mortgage which he can't possibly pay, when the banks can milk him for 2 years and then foreclose on an asset which has appreciated in value. This wasn't due to some flawed AI deciding home values (I don't think they ever stopped doing appraisals) or determining who did and didn't get mortgages, it was a deliberate act of fraud by the bankers. The next bubble has been in the works for the last 10 years. The so-called "reforms" in Dodd-Frank were nothing but a speed bump for Wall St. They got their bailouts and went right back to their old games.
The basic elements of the story are probably true, but this line is pure propaganda.
"Russia's targeting of electoral systems"
Notice how they've been gradually amping up the rhetoric? First it was blaming the evil Russians for hacking the DNC and Podesta e-mails. Then it was Russia "influencing" U.S. elections. Next, they started tossing in the phrase "Russia hacking U.S. elections"(total BS) and now it's "Russia targeting electoral systems"? The implication being that Russians actually hacked the voting machines?
WaPo also reported that evil Russians "Penetrated the U.S. Electricity Grid" when it was just some (apparently Russian-authored) malware found on one laptop at a VT utility. A laptop that was never tied into the electricity grid.
I'm no Trump fan, but this anti-Russian propaganda is as dangerous as it is nauseating. I haven't even seen proof that "Russians", let alone the Russian government, were responsible for the original DNC/Podesta hack.
What would you choose if your only options were performing labor in exchange for food & shelter or sleeping on the street and begging? And was it government that fixed the abuses with company towns and company stores or was that the genesis of the union movement?
Government also passed laws which mandate "minimum standard of habitation" for rental property. A living space must have all of the modern conveniences or it's illegal to rent on a long-term basis. Such amenities come with a cost. People are homeless because they are priced out of the market. Politicians talk about "affordable housing" but they make it illegal to build and rent cheap, rudimentary shelters. Why not rent out cabins or tents in a campground type setting with communal toilets & showers? Government even evicts people from basic shelters that they built for themselves! "Sorry, you can't live in that plywood cabin you built because it doesn't meet our standards, so we're going to bulldoze it and make you sleep on the street." I think that's absolutely barbaric.
The free market & private charity won't produce a utopia, but the results would certainly be no worse than government "solutions".
Why does it matter? Would the government be embarrassed if the website couldn't handle the traffic? Would they not want to admit that there was a massive barrage of comments from citizens opposed to their policies? Or are they just waiting a few days to blame it on the evil Russians?
Even if every single HBO subscriber wrote a comment to the FCC, the government wouldn't read more than a few (if they bother to read ANY) and certainly wouldn't do anything in response. We might get a new head of the FCC in a few years, but the career bureaucrats aren't elected and won't be up for re-appointment. They don't care what you think because they have no reason to care.
Who has the property rights when it comes to your "public space"? This type of scenario, which seems to necessitate restrictions on The Right to Free Speech, arises directly from the fact that the ownership of the property is not clearly defined. The guy shouting "gunman!" on his own property is within his rights. If the crowd owns the property, he's violating their rights. The nebulous "public" ownership obfuscates things.
So it's the old "Change how you vote or we shall taunt you a second time!" type of strategy? Rural white people must comply with your demands and as a reward the urban leftists tone down the insults? LOL
I think those stereotypes are obnoxious and largely inaccurate, but they don't really concern me. I think it's people like you and the OP who should be concerned. You're the ones who wake up the day after the election and wonder how it's possible that Republicans are going to be in control of the House, Senate and Presidency. You seethe in frustration and ask "How can these rural white people vote so stupidly?". I'm patiently trying to explain to you that the rudeness and arrogance of urban leftists are part of what drives those results.
"You're an idiot! Vote Democrat because I live in the city, I'm smarter than you and I know who will serve your best interests better than you do!"
It's a lot easier to alienate people than it is to bring them over to your side. Convey that message or exude that attitude to someone that's on the fence, or even leaning slightly Democrat and it will push them firmly into the Republican camp.
That particular restriction is not a limitation on speech. It is protection of private property rights.
The government does not have the power to ban Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. Imagine trying to recite that speech in a crowded theater and refusing to leave when asked. You would likely be arrested, but not because the government has the power to restrict certain types of speech. For the same reason, you can't barge into someone's house and claim that you have a First Amendment Right to speak. You do have a Right to speak, but that doesn't entitle you to create a disturbance on private property.
If arrogant urban leftists would stop making assumptions and creating negative stereotypes about rural white voters (deplorable racist bozos who are afraid of communism, believe in trickle down economics etc. etc.) it would be rather easy to build a platform, even one including socialized medicine, that would be appealing to them.
Why would the rural poor support Democrat plans for healthcare? Many of them earn just enough to be disqualified from Medicaid but too little to be able to afford good insurance. What did the Democrat majority under Obama do for them? Slapped them with a fine for the "crime" of not buying insurance. What did the Democrat majority under Clinton do for them? Signed NAFTA & the WTO treaty, deregulated Wall Street & passed the gun control bill of 1994. Betrayal hurts. Why would any rural white person, who has spent the last 20 years watching their factories close and their jobs go overseas vote for Democrats? The same Democrats who also say they want to consider Australia-style gun control.
Oh, and you might want to keep your superiority complex under control. Insulting rural voters & telling them that they're too stupid to vote in their own best interests only hardens their resolve to oppose you, regardless of what the Republicans are offering.
The number of U.S. manufacturing jobs hovered in the 17-18 million range for about 30 years, 1970-2000. NAFTA was signed in 1994, GATT/WTO treaty was signed in 1995. Five years later, the number of people employed in manufacturing in the U.S. started a precipitous decline, going from ~17 million to under 12 million in the course of the next ten years.
It's hard to believe that only 650k of those jobs were lost because of the trade agreements and the other 4.35 million were lost due to some huge wave of automation.
We have thousands of small committees making decisions about public education. They're called "school boards".
Surrendering local and state control to the federal government for the sake of "efficiency" is a terrible trade-off. It relieves you of the responsibility for decision making, but it also renders you powerless to implement change. What if you and every other parent with kids in your local school agree that the standards are terrible? How are you going to remedy the situation in your "efficient" top-down, one-size fits all model? By contacting your Congressman & Senators? Wouldn't it be better if you could approach the school board or city council with your concerns?
The parents and school board are much more concerned with the welfare of the children in the local school than a bunch of unelected bureaucrats in Washington DC. The OP is right. The federal government has no Constitutional authority to be sticking its nose in public education.
Their metric is "kg of CO2 per million BTUs of fuel"?
"electricity sector has shown the most change in the last decade... EIA attributes this to increasing amounts of nuclear, wind, hydroelectric, and solar power"
How much "fuel" goes into wind, hydro and solar? If it's zero fuel in, zero carbon out, how can it improve the "carbon intensity" of the electrical power sector? Neither the ars article nor the eia.gov website really explains this. My *guess* is that they are taking the electricity output of renewables in kWh, converting that to BTUs, calling that the amount of "fuel" in and considering the CO2 output '0'.
"the carbon emissions of the US transportation sector per unit of fuel used has hardly changed at all."
If renewables produce zero carbon output but use a non-zero amount of "fuel" in electricity generation, how can they compare that to transportation without considering fuel efficiency? Wouldn't it be more accurate to talk about transportation in terms of how much "fuel" is used to move a particular amount of mass over a particular distance? It takes a certain amount of BTUs to move 1kg of mass 1km. If the transportation sector can move the same amount of mass over the same distances with a fraction of the fuel, it hardly seems fair to claim that the "carbon intensity" is unchanged since 1975.
" As long as he doesnt(sic) have ddos capability and doesnt turn to nefarious purposes hes doing everybody a favor,"
Max Butler
thought he was doing everyone a favor when he created a worm to patch a security flaw in BIND. No nefarious intent or purposes. Doing something which merely accesses a system, especially a government system, is considered a criminal act however. The Feds don't accept the argument: "Just a white hat, securing some systems." They came down hard on him and he ended up in prison.
The person or people who did this better remain anonymous, especially if the botnet touched any government hardware.
I'm not strongly opposed to net neutrality, but consider this: If your transport business had 10,000 semis constantly using the roads, why shouldn't you pay more? I am NOT suggesting a f***ing tax on Internet traffic, but isn't that the theory behind gas taxes and tolls? The heaviest users of the service pay more?
Sure, we can point to the ISPs and claim that they're the greedy bastards, but Netflix & Google have been strong advocates for net neutrality and we can be sure that it's not because of the kindness in their hearts.
Yeah, because the $4 Trillion federal budget and $37.6 Billion state budget just aren't high enough. If only we paid more taxes and increased government spending, there would be no more homelessness. How much does government need before they can solve all of our problems for us? Can you put a number on it?
I know you said that facetiously, but the market would take care of it very quickly... if the U.S. government would stop actively preventing that from happening.
The very same EpiPens which sell for hundreds of dollars in the USA can be had in Europe & Canada for less than $100. In a free market, these price differences could not possibly exist. People in the USA would just drive across the border to buy them or pay shipping costs to get them from a foreign supplier. Prices would have to reach an equilibrium because nobody would pay the ridiculously inflated USA price for the same product.
Why doesn't this happen you ask? Because the U.S. government makes it ILLEGAL to import or even re-import these products, or any other prescription medications for that matter. Remove the government ban and the market would indeed take care of it. Maybe folks in Europe and Canada would have to pay a little more, but USA customers would pay a lot less.
Then there's the whole multi-million dollar FDA barrier to entry for domestic competitors.
Should 1.6% of the population of California have more say in the national government than 100% of the population of Wyoming? Should 2.4% of the population of Texas be able to negate the voice of 100% of Vermont?
"US" stands for "United States" Both the legislative branch of government and the national election system were created to provide a balance so that high population states could not impose their will on low population states via the U.S. government.
If you want California to be free of that annoying U.S. Constitution, SECEDE!
I'm very skeptical of this "police are less dangerous than armed citizens because of their training" argument. Police get stressed just like everyone else and their track record on protecting innocent bystanders is less than stellar.
Remember those idiots in California who fired over 100 rounds at two women in a blue Toyota.... which they somehow managed to mistake for Chris Dorner's gray Nissan? How about the cops in NYC who shot 3 innocent bystanders and injured 6 others near the Empire State Building as they attempted to take out ONE guy with a weapon? There was also an incident in Times Square where the cops fired at a guy, missed him completely but managed to wound two other people.
I'll take my chances with the armed citizens. The cops may be trained, but they strike me as being a little too trigger-happy.
Actually, the UK would refuse to extradite Assange to the USA unless there was a guarantee that he would not face the death penalty.
Assange was arrested in the UK due to Sweden's request that he be extradited to face sexual assault charges. He has repeatedly said that his concern with going to Sweden is that he might be extradited from there to the USA.
Slashdot Mirror
"Without some independent mechanism to enforce honest behavior any market will become a criminal extortion enterprise."
Government is just a criminal extortion enterprise cloaked in a veil of legitimacy. Once you look past the bullshit, government operates on the basis of violence. All of their revenue is extorted based on the threat of violence and all their decrees are enforced at gunpoint. If you don't pay your taxes, government will steal your property and/or try to throw you in a cage. If you resist, they will resort to violence or even murder. The left wing fantasy is that big government would be good, if only the "right people" were in charge. A fantasy that is dispelled by all of the historical evidence. In the 20th century alone, governments have murdered tens of millions of people, typically their own citizens. That's not even considering war casualties.
It's only logical that food, fuel & water prices should go up when there's scarcity. High prices create the incentive for eliminating the scarcity. People who live in hurricane and tornado zones & don't have 2 weeks worth of food, fuel, water & medicine are idiots.
The ONLY reason pharmaceuticals in the USA are so ridiculously expensive is that your government makes it illegal to import or re-import any prescription drugs. Government agents guard the borders and make sure you don't come back from Europe or Canada with a suitcase full of cheap Epi-Pens. Get government out of the way and the free market will eliminate cross-border price discrepancies.
If regulatory capture is such a huge problem, then it's just more evidence that government is a fundamentally flawed institution. Yes, monopolies and special interests clearly use government power to control the economy. Big pharma using government to prevent competition is a perfect example. If that power can be so flagrantly abused, why should government possess that power in the first place? Take away the power and you remove the potential for abuse.
Fluoride has benefits for dental health, but mainly in surface application Sunscreen is useful to prevent sunburns, but it's not typically ingested.
Even if fluoride isn't lethal in "small" quantities, that doesn't prove that it is harmless. Lead isn't lethal in small quantities, but its effect as a neurotoxin is well documented.
Do a few searches on "fluoride" + "IQ". It's definitely a matter of dosage, but there's evidence that "high" doses can cause developmental defects in children.
Jeesh, I guess you take your global warming *cough* "climate change" pretty seriously don't you? WTF did I do to arouse your righteous indignation? ...". I don't call estimates that are off by 2X, 3X or more than an order of magnitude "consensus". It just goes to show that the people making these predictions are not doing "science". They are taking scientific DATA, gathered over many decades, creating mathematical models and then trying to extrapolate into the future, based on a model of the past. That's not "science".
I quoted three stories which gave vastly divergent estimates for sea level rise by 2050. The exhaustively used "climate change" talking points are: "The science is settled" & "95%(or whatever) of scientists agree
The linked article reads: "10 to 20 cm of sea-level rise expected no later than 2050."
Huh? I don't try to keep up with all of these doomsday predictions, but I thought it was supposed to be several feet and that huge tracts of land in coastal areas would be underwater by 2050? so I googled
sea level rise by 2050
The first result was a PBS story from 2012. This article quotes a report in the journal Environment Research Letters stating: "Sea levels could rise as much as 19 inches by 2050, according to what the report calls 'mid-range projections.' " Next result was an article from The Guardian in 2015 which states "sea levels may still rise at least 6 meters (20 ft) above their current heights, radically reshaping the world's coastline". They also reference some pseudo-scientists in some scientific publication
I thought there was some "consensus" on this stuff? Have the "climate scientists" reached the consensus that sea levels will rise by anywhere from 10cm to 600cm by 2050, with 48cm being in the "mid range"?
Predicting the future is NOT science.
Assad had been in power for well over a decade before the war started. His family was in power long before that. He did not need to manufacture an enemy to consolidate his power.
It made absolutely zero sense for Assad to use chemical weapons at that particular time. His forces were winning the war, so it's not as though this was some desperate, last-ditch effort to stave off imminent defeat. Furthermore, this supposed attack occurred shortly after U.S. Secretary of State Tillerson had publicly stated that Assad could be part of a post-war Syria. That was a departure from the long standing U.S. policy of regime change.
He's winning the war, the U.S. government said they won't call for his ouster in peace negotiations ... and then he decides to generate international condemnation with an ineffectual chemical weapons attack? I don't believe the official Western narrative for one minute. I'm not saying Assad wouldn't use chemical weapons because he's a nice guy, but because it made no strategic sense for him to do so. Hoax, false flag or an air strike that hit chemical weapons stored in the area.
I don't think that's an accurate depiction. Banks were giving out mortgage loans with full knowledge that the borrowers would default on the loan. This was partly because they were bundling the mortgages into securities to be sold to other investors. They were able to collect their fees on the mortgage origination and then pass the risk off to someone else. It was also due to the false belief that property values would rise in perpetuity. Who cares about the poor schmuck taking out the mortgage which he can't possibly pay, when the banks can milk him for 2 years and then foreclose on an asset which has appreciated in value. This wasn't due to some flawed AI deciding home values (I don't think they ever stopped doing appraisals) or determining who did and didn't get mortgages, it was a deliberate act of fraud by the bankers.
The next bubble has been in the works for the last 10 years. The so-called "reforms" in Dodd-Frank were nothing but a speed bump for Wall St. They got their bailouts and went right back to their old games.
What about this line:
"...Russia's targeting of electoral systems..."
The word "systems" implies that the evil Russians were actually hacking the voting machines.
The WaPo is the worst "fake news" outlet in the country.
The basic elements of the story are probably true, but this line is pure propaganda.
"Russia's targeting of electoral systems"
Notice how they've been gradually amping up the rhetoric? First it was blaming the evil Russians for hacking the DNC and Podesta e-mails. Then it was Russia "influencing" U.S. elections. Next, they started tossing in the phrase "Russia hacking U.S. elections"(total BS) and now it's "Russia targeting electoral systems"? The implication being that Russians actually hacked the voting machines?
WaPo also reported that evil Russians "Penetrated the U.S. Electricity Grid" when it was just some (apparently Russian-authored) malware found on one laptop at a VT utility. A laptop that was never tied into the electricity grid.
I'm no Trump fan, but this anti-Russian propaganda is as dangerous as it is nauseating. I haven't even seen proof that "Russians", let alone the Russian government, were responsible for the original DNC/Podesta hack.
What would you choose if your only options were performing labor in exchange for food & shelter or sleeping on the street and begging? And was it government that fixed the abuses with company towns and company stores or was that the genesis of the union movement?
Government also passed laws which mandate "minimum standard of habitation" for rental property. A living space must have all of the modern conveniences or it's illegal to rent on a long-term basis. Such amenities come with a cost. People are homeless because they are priced out of the market. Politicians talk about "affordable housing" but they make it illegal to build and rent cheap, rudimentary shelters. Why not rent out cabins or tents in a campground type setting with communal toilets & showers? Government even evicts people from basic shelters that they built for themselves! "Sorry, you can't live in that plywood cabin you built because it doesn't meet our standards, so we're going to bulldoze it and make you sleep on the street." I think that's absolutely barbaric.
The free market & private charity won't produce a utopia, but the results would certainly be no worse than government "solutions".
Why does it matter? Would the government be embarrassed if the website couldn't handle the traffic? Would they not want to admit that there was a massive barrage of comments from citizens opposed to their policies? Or are they just waiting a few days to blame it on the evil Russians?
Even if every single HBO subscriber wrote a comment to the FCC, the government wouldn't read more than a few (if they bother to read ANY) and certainly wouldn't do anything in response. We might get a new head of the FCC in a few years, but the career bureaucrats aren't elected and won't be up for re-appointment. They don't care what you think because they have no reason to care.
Who has the property rights when it comes to your "public space"? This type of scenario, which seems to necessitate restrictions on The Right to Free Speech, arises directly from the fact that the ownership of the property is not clearly defined. The guy shouting "gunman!" on his own property is within his rights. If the crowd owns the property, he's violating their rights. The nebulous "public" ownership obfuscates things.
So it's the old "Change how you vote or we shall taunt you a second time!" type of strategy? Rural white people must comply with your demands and as a reward the urban leftists tone down the insults? LOL
I think those stereotypes are obnoxious and largely inaccurate, but they don't really concern me. I think it's people like you and the OP who should be concerned. You're the ones who wake up the day after the election and wonder how it's possible that Republicans are going to be in control of the House, Senate and Presidency. You seethe in frustration and ask "How can these rural white people vote so stupidly?". I'm patiently trying to explain to you that the rudeness and arrogance of urban leftists are part of what drives those results.
"You're an idiot! Vote Democrat because I live in the city, I'm smarter than you and I know who will serve your best interests better than you do!"
It's a lot easier to alienate people than it is to bring them over to your side. Convey that message or exude that attitude to someone that's on the fence, or even leaning slightly Democrat and it will push them firmly into the Republican camp.
"FALSELY crying fire in a crowded theater."
That particular restriction is not a limitation on speech. It is protection of private property rights.
The government does not have the power to ban Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. Imagine trying to recite that speech in a crowded theater and refusing to leave when asked. You would likely be arrested, but not because the government has the power to restrict certain types of speech. For the same reason, you can't barge into someone's house and claim that you have a First Amendment Right to speak. You do have a Right to speak, but that doesn't entitle you to create a disturbance on private property.
If arrogant urban leftists would stop making assumptions and creating negative stereotypes about rural white voters (deplorable racist bozos who are afraid of communism, believe in trickle down economics etc. etc.) it would be rather easy to build a platform, even one including socialized medicine, that would be appealing to them.
Why would the rural poor support Democrat plans for healthcare? Many of them earn just enough to be disqualified from Medicaid but too little to be able to afford good insurance. What did the Democrat majority under Obama do for them? Slapped them with a fine for the "crime" of not buying insurance. What did the Democrat majority under Clinton do for them? Signed NAFTA & the WTO treaty, deregulated Wall Street & passed the gun control bill of 1994. Betrayal hurts. Why would any rural white person, who has spent the last 20 years watching their factories close and their jobs go overseas vote for Democrats? The same Democrats who also say they want to consider Australia-style gun control.
Oh, and you might want to keep your superiority complex under control. Insulting rural voters & telling them that they're too stupid to vote in their own best interests only hardens their resolve to oppose you, regardless of what the Republicans are offering.
The number of U.S. manufacturing jobs hovered in the 17-18 million range for about 30 years, 1970-2000. NAFTA was signed in 1994, GATT/WTO treaty was signed in 1995. Five years later, the number of people employed in manufacturing in the U.S. started a precipitous decline, going from ~17 million to under 12 million in the course of the next ten years.
It's hard to believe that only 650k of those jobs were lost because of the trade agreements and the other 4.35 million were lost due to some huge wave of automation.
We have thousands of small committees making decisions about public education. They're called "school boards".
Surrendering local and state control to the federal government for the sake of "efficiency" is a terrible trade-off. It relieves you of the responsibility for decision making, but it also renders you powerless to implement change. What if you and every other parent with kids in your local school agree that the standards are terrible? How are you going to remedy the situation in your "efficient" top-down, one-size fits all model? By contacting your Congressman & Senators? Wouldn't it be better if you could approach the school board or city council with your concerns?
The parents and school board are much more concerned with the welfare of the children in the local school than a bunch of unelected bureaucrats in Washington DC. The OP is right. The federal government has no Constitutional authority to be sticking its nose in public education.
Their metric is "kg of CO2 per million BTUs of fuel"?
"electricity sector has shown the most change in the last decade ... EIA attributes this to increasing amounts of nuclear, wind, hydroelectric, and solar power"
How much "fuel" goes into wind, hydro and solar? If it's zero fuel in, zero carbon out, how can it improve the "carbon intensity" of the electrical power sector? Neither the ars article nor the eia.gov website really explains this. My *guess* is that they are taking the electricity output of renewables in kWh, converting that to BTUs, calling that the amount of "fuel" in and considering the CO2 output '0'.
"the carbon emissions of the US transportation sector per unit of fuel used has hardly changed at all."
If renewables produce zero carbon output but use a non-zero amount of "fuel" in electricity generation, how can they compare that to transportation without considering fuel efficiency? Wouldn't it be more accurate to talk about transportation in terms of how much "fuel" is used to move a particular amount of mass over a particular distance? It takes a certain amount of BTUs to move 1kg of mass 1km. If the transportation sector can move the same amount of mass over the same distances with a fraction of the fuel, it hardly seems fair to claim that the "carbon intensity" is unchanged since 1975.
" As long as he doesnt(sic) have ddos capability and doesnt turn to nefarious purposes hes doing everybody a favor,"
Max Butler thought he was doing everyone a favor when he created a worm to patch a security flaw in BIND. No nefarious intent or purposes. Doing something which merely accesses a system, especially a government system, is considered a criminal act however. The Feds don't accept the argument: "Just a white hat, securing some systems." They came down hard on him and he ended up in prison.
The person or people who did this better remain anonymous, especially if the botnet touched any government hardware.
I'm not strongly opposed to net neutrality, but consider this: If your transport business had 10,000 semis constantly using the roads, why shouldn't you pay more? I am NOT suggesting a f***ing tax on Internet traffic, but isn't that the theory behind gas taxes and tolls? The heaviest users of the service pay more?
Sure, we can point to the ISPs and claim that they're the greedy bastards, but Netflix & Google have been strong advocates for net neutrality and we can be sure that it's not because of the kindness in their hearts.
Yeah, because the $4 Trillion federal budget and $37.6 Billion state budget just aren't high enough. If only we paid more taxes and increased government spending, there would be no more homelessness. How much does government need before they can solve all of our problems for us? Can you put a number on it?
Fuck big government.
I know you said that facetiously, but the market would take care of it very quickly ... if the U.S. government would stop actively preventing that from happening.
The very same EpiPens which sell for hundreds of dollars in the USA can be had in Europe & Canada for less than $100. In a free market, these price differences could not possibly exist. People in the USA would just drive across the border to buy them or pay shipping costs to get them from a foreign supplier. Prices would have to reach an equilibrium because nobody would pay the ridiculously inflated USA price for the same product.
Why doesn't this happen you ask? Because the U.S. government makes it ILLEGAL to import or even re-import these products, or any other prescription medications for that matter. Remove the government ban and the market would indeed take care of it. Maybe folks in Europe and Canada would have to pay a little more, but USA customers would pay a lot less.
Then there's the whole multi-million dollar FDA barrier to entry for domestic competitors.
Government is the problem.
Should 1.6% of the population of California have more say in the national government than 100% of the population of Wyoming? Should 2.4% of the population of Texas be able to negate the voice of 100% of Vermont?
"US" stands for "United States" Both the legislative branch of government and the national election system were created to provide a balance so that high population states could not impose their will on low population states via the U.S. government.
If you want California to be free of that annoying U.S. Constitution, SECEDE!
www.yescalifornia.org
I'm very skeptical of this "police are less dangerous than armed citizens because of their training" argument. Police get stressed just like everyone else and their track record on protecting innocent bystanders is less than stellar.
Remember those idiots in California who fired over 100 rounds at two women in a blue Toyota .... which they somehow managed to mistake for Chris Dorner's gray Nissan? How about the cops in NYC who shot 3 innocent bystanders and injured 6 others near the Empire State Building as they attempted to take out ONE guy with a weapon? There was also an incident in Times Square where the cops fired at a guy, missed him completely but managed to wound two other people.
I'll take my chances with the armed citizens. The cops may be trained, but they strike me as being a little too trigger-happy.
"We need a simple government agency"
LOL Don't you keep up with the news? When government agencies find vulnerabilities, they don't report them, they exploit them!
Actually, the UK would refuse to extradite Assange to the USA unless there was a guarantee that he would not face the death penalty.
Assange was arrested in the UK due to Sweden's request that he be extradited to face sexual assault charges. He has repeatedly said that his concern with going to Sweden is that he might be extradited from there to the USA.